STASIS

A couple of spooky and creepy moments, but not really enough tension for the type of game this is. The pacing is slow and stilted dude to the point and click nature of the puzzle solving. I felt the PDA's in the game gave away to much info early on. So I didn't really enjoy thay intial sense of mystery for long. Zero replay so a one shot deal of just beat and forever delete.

First off, graphics look real good. As far as top down 90s retro cRPG graphics go. If you happen to like that sort of thing. Which I do. Audio is fittingly eerie. Voice-acting is passable. The writing is so-so. It's no Soma for sure, but nothing is as good as Soma. Stasis tries really, REALLY hard to shock you, mutants, bugs, clones and inhumane experiments, every horror cliches imaginable. Wish it had eased off on the log entries. The entire game is stuffed with dead people's PDAs, and of course in their final moments they always find the time to write down their entire life story. It would be more elegant to get your plot across with gameplay and environmental storytelling instead of literal exposition. It often breaks immersion when your main guy wonders "What's going on?!" even though we just read 10 minutes of log entries exactly spelling out what's going on. As for the gameplay, Stasis is a pure point & click game. With very few contextual death scenes (like classic Sierra games). Respawn points are fair but it often forces you to sit through unskippable dialogue... The puzzles are, well, I got 3 words for you: Crowbar Grappling Hook. Typically obtuse and nonsensical, just click everything on everything. A highlight option would have been nice as sometimes you will overlook important spots. Since this IS a horror game the visuals are dark, sometimes it's not clear what exactly you're looking at in between the mess of blood, broken machines and splattered monster guts. My final complaint would be on the technical side, the options menu is very bare bones. No adjustments of screen region, can't even balance the audio or turn subs on/off! Bottom line, it's ok. If you like creepy games and/or point&click games, you'll probably get a halfway decent time out of Stasis.

STASIS is a decent space horror game with disturbing graphics and an interesting storyline. I'm surprised this game was made by a three man-studio, as the quality of the game feels much higher than that! The story itself is pretty trope-y, you play as your Regular Joe waking up on a spaceship and you start looking for your family. However it does lead into something more, something worse and it does tie into a really good ending with twists and turns. Reading the PDAs that are available gives more background lore, making the setting even better. The characters might be trope-y but they're not over the top and the voice acting is actually really good. Gameplay-wise it's puzzle solving with simple point n click mechanics and sometimes timing involved. It makes the good flow on and you can instead focus on the story and the environments, which are both beautiful and terrifying. This game is visually appealing, however at times maybe a bit too dark graphically speaking. However the game is dark itself as well, based on both the storyline and the fact that your character can meet his death in several gruesome ways, both self-inflicted and by the surrounding environment. I recommend this to any space horror fan! It's really good and I can't wait for the upcoming sequel! In the meanwhile I'll play the other games released by this dev.

World building and atmosphere are excellent. I found myself reading every data log and every description. The plot was a little predictable but really I wasn't here for that, it was absolutely serviceable just not mold breaking or anything. It's made up for with the detail and style the setting oozes. The puzzles are as titled, mostly excellent. There is almost no moon logic in this game, and I would hesitate even to call the more esoteric puzzles moon logic, just perhaps a bit 'large' of a logical leap. I only hit maybe a handful of moments where I was left going 'what?' and typically it was only a blip in a puzzle chain where the rest was perfectly fine (perhaps this is what made it stand out more) I highly recommend the game, it clocked in at about 5 hours for me, but be aware there are a few 'can't get item until character knows you need item' moments and a few 'wait around for a thing to happen before puzzle can progress' moments. Don't feel ashamed double checking a guide if you get tripped up for these.

Its interesting enough to keep going, but the animations and audio are just bad. It sounds like the player character is panting directly in my ear, but if I use speakers instead of headphones, I can't hear the low key ambient sounds. Also, there is no options menu at all to adjust audio or video anything.